Amorphous Photonic Structures with Brilliant and Noniridescent Colors via Polymer-Assisted Colloidal Assembly

Efficient and large area fabrication of amorphous photonic crystals (APCs) with multicolor, angle independency, and fine resolution is always desired owing to their application in color displays, sensors, and pigments. Here, we report a polymer-assisted colloidal assembly (PACA) method to fabricate APCs with brilliant structural colors by the co-assembly of silica colloidal particles, polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), and carbon black (CB). PVP is the key to enable the amorphous aggregations of the particles, the uniform and noniridescent structural colors of the APCs. Moreover, multicolor and high-resolution patterns can be prepared through the mask-based brush printing with colloids-PVP-CB precursor solution as ink (named as APCs-ink). The developed printing method can be applied to various substrates with different roughness, curvature, and flexibility such as papers, metals, plastic films, stones, and even curved glasses. PACA is efficient and straightforward for the fabrication of APCs and high-resolution patterns with large area, low cost, and easy operation, which will facilitate their practical applications in the fields of color-related display, green painting, anticounterfeiting, and so on.